Fig. 1

Study design of whole transcriptome sequencing for PBMCs from patients with COVID-19 during recovery. a Patients are divided into mild, moderate and severe groups according to clinical symptoms of each one. b Timeline of the disease course of 18 patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. RT-PCR indicates the PCR test of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid. A positive RT-PCR (marked by “+”) indicates that the SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid was found in the throat swab, nasopharyngeal swab, sputum or other samples, which were distinguished by using different colors. “−”, negative RT-PCR. The solid red lines stand for treatment stage, solid blue lines for convalescence stage and doted green lines for rehabilitation stage. The sampling days were marked below this line. The inverted triangle symbol is used to mark the time point for collecting PBMC samples at each stage. c A flowchart showing the process of library construction and RNA sequencing of PBMC samples from patients with COVID-19